Getting Started with IATI
4. What do I have to fill in?
Organizations are requested to fill in a set of fields that correspond to those required by the donor. Depending on the donor, the fields you must fill in might vary very slightly (donors are aiming to harmonise their reporting requirements as much as possible).
For an elaborate description of each of the requested fields, download our IATI publication guidelines:
Or have a look at the examples in the presentation below:
Link your activities to those of others
The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs pays particular attention to the structure of your data set and the links to donors and partners.
Most important is that you must always link ‘upwards’ via the Transactions, to whom you are directly receiving the money from. This could either be a donor or another NGO if they received funds from the donor and are then disbursing it to you, which is often the case in larger alliance program structures.
Before you get started, make sure you have the IATI Activity ID reference at hand, this should look something like this: XM-DAC-7-PPR-4000001234. This identifies the project from which you are receiving funding. This number should be available on your contract or can otherwise be found by searching for it on www.ontwikkelingssamenwerking.nl.
For a quick ‘How to’, read our blog on ‘How to link to the donor’
For a more elaborate explanation, download our specific guidance:
Using the donor guidelines, fill in all the relevant project / programme information fields, paying particular attention to the transaction fields. This is the section where you will need to refer to the Ministry’s IATI Activity ID, when using the Incoming Funds / Commitments transaction type. By filling in this reference, it allows for the two projects to become ‘connected’ and it enables traceability.
When you make it to the results section, add the relevant results and respective indicators, as agreed with the Ministry. At present the Ministry will only read in quantitative results into METIS, but this does not stop you from publishing qualitative results.